Socrates conversed and taught and died; where Demos thenes breathed deliberate valor into the despairing hearts of his countrymen; where the dramatists exhibited their matchless tragedy and comedy; where Plato charmed the 5 hearers of the Academy with the divinest teaching of Philosophy, while the Cephissus murmured by under the shadow of immemorial olive-groves, and the Hill of Mars; where St. Paul taught the wondering but respectful sages of Agora, the knowledge of the living God, and the 10 resurrection to life eternal. There stand the ruins of the Parthenon, saluted and transfigured by the rising and the setting sun, or the unspeakable loveliness of the Grecian night; beautiful, solemn, pathetic. In that focus of an hour's easy walk, the 15 lights of ancient culture condensed their burning rays; and from this centre they have lighted all time and the whole world. [GEORGE GORDON BYRON, Lord Byron, was born in London, January 22, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, in Greece, April 19, 1824. In March, 1812, he pub. lished the first two cantos of his splendid poem, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," which produced an impression upon the public almost without precedent in English literature, and gained him the very highest place among the poets of the day. From that time till his death he poured forth a rapid succession of brilliant and striking productions, varying in degrees of merit, but all contributing to maintain him in his lofty literary position, and keeping his name ever fresh upon men's lips. The interest which he awakened as a poet was further enhanced by a wayward and irregular life, by an unhappy marriage, a separation from his wife, and by his finally joining the Greeks in their struggles against the Turks. Perhaps no man of letters was ever so much talked about, written about, attacked and defended, in his own life, as he. Lord Byron's fame with posterity will not equal the prodigious popularity he enjoyed among his contemporaries. And yet his poetry has, in- an intellectual point of view, some great and enduring excellences. In description and in the expression of passion he is unrivalled. His power over the resources of the language is great, though he is not a careful or accurate writer. His poetry abounds with passages of melting tenderness and exquisite sweetness, which take captive and bear away the susceptible heart. His wit, too, is playful and brilliant, and his sarcasm venomous and blistering. His leading characteristic is energy: he is never languid or tame; and in his highest moods, his words flash and burn like lightning from the cloud, and hurry the reader along with the breathless speed of the tempest. Much of Lord Byron's poetry is objectionable in a moral point of view. Some of it ministers undisguisedly to the evil passions, and confounds the distinctions between right and wrong; and still more of it is false and morbid in its tone, and teaches, directly or indirectly, the mischievous and irreligious doctrine, that the unhappiness of men is just in proportion to their intellectual superiority. There was little that was respectable or estimable in Lord Byron's life. He had no fixed principles, and was the sport of every whim or passion that assailed him. For many years, he lived an outcast from his home and country, in open defiance of the laws of God and man; not without spasms of selfreproach and half purposes of reform. His joining the Greeks showed that his profligate and self-indulgent habits had not destroyed in him the power of vigorous action and generous sacrifice. The following extract is from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Thermopylæ is a narrow pass leading from Thessaly into Southern Greece, where Leonidas, and a small band of Spartan heroes, resisting an immense Persian host, were all slain. The town of Sparta, or Lacedæmon, was upon the river Eurotas. Thrasybulus was an Athenian general who overthrew the power of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens B. C. 403. He first seized the fortress of Phyle, which was about fifteen miles from Athens. The Helots were slaves to the Spartans. Colonna, or Colonni, anciently Sunium, is a promontory forming the southern extremity of Attica, where there was a temple to Minerva, who was also called Tritonia. Hymettus and Pentelicus were mountains near Athens, the former famous for honey, and the latter for marble. The modern name of Pentelicus 18 Mendeli. Athena was a name by which the Greeks called Minerva, the lit erary goddess of Athens.] 1 FAIR Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great! O! who that gallant spirit shall resume, 2 Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train, Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain, Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, 3 In all, save form alone, how changed! and who That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, Or tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful page. 4 Hereditary bondmen! know ye not Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow? Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe! Greece! change thy lords: thy state is still the same: Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame. 5 When riseth Lacedæmon's hardihood, When Thebes Epaminondas rears again, Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate? 6 And yet, how lovely, in thine age of woe, Land of lost gods, and godlike men, art thou! Broke by the share of every rustic plough: 7 Save where some solitary column mourns Above its prostrate brethren of the cave; Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave; Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave, Where the gray stones and unmolested grass Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, While strangers only, not regardless pass, Lingering, like me, perchance, to gaze and sigh "Alas!" 8 Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields. 9 Where'er we tread 't is haunted, holy ground; The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon. Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone: Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon. 10 Long, to the remnants of thy splendor past, Shall pilgrims pensive, but unwearied, throng; XC. -THE INFLUENCE OF ATHENS. MACAULAY. [The following extract is from a review of "Mitford's History of Greece," Juvenal was a Roman satirist. Dante was an illustrious Italian poet, born in 1265. Cervantes was a great Spanish writer, the author of "Don Quixote." Bacon was a great philosopher and writer of England. Butler was the author of "Hudibras," the wittiest poem in the English language. Erasmus was a celebrated scholar, a native of Holland. Pascal was an eminent writer and philosopher of France. Mirabeau was an eloquent French orator, who took a leading part in the early movements of the French revolution. Galileo was an illustrious philosopher and scientific discoverer, a native of Pisa in Italy. Algernon Sidney was an English statesman and patriot, who was executed upon a false charge of treason in the reign of Charles II.] If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most 5 valuable. But what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the |